Following on from an impressive start to the season whilst getting to grips with a new car, MPS were delighted to be able to deliver their British GT Professional Driver, Scott Malvern, a car setup in which he could Top the Timing Sheets of just his 3rd British GT GT3 Pro Qualifying Session with the new-to-the-team Porsche 991.2 GT3R at the Donington Park GP Circuit.
With the Rear Engine’d Racer from Weissach sporting a rearwards bias to it’s weight distribution, it commands a slightly different driving style in order to extract the best performance from it, in relation to say a more conventional front engine, rear wheel drive machine.
With some differences between the handling balance as reported by the drivers vs the balance indicated by the Key Performance Indicators in MPS’ Performance Engineering data analysis, Le Mans winner & Porsche ace Nick Tandy was brought in to work with the team at the Official Test Day before the 3rd event of the British GT Season.
Nick’s experience quickly confirmed the handling balance issues noted in the data and MPS and the Porsche Pro quickly set about working through Set Up changes to the TPR machine to improve this handling balance.
The logged data & video from Nick’s driving then enabled MPS and Nick to demonstrate to the team’s new-to-Porsche-911 driver’s what driving style is required to extract the most from the Porsche, enabling them to calibrate as to what should “feel” normal in their own minds whilst pushing the rear engine’d machine to its limits on track.
This positive progress from both a setup point of view as well as a driver feel and confidence point of view from the test day allowed the team’s performance as a whole to take a step up come the race event itself.
This progress was highlighted by Nick’s best ever GT3 qualifying performance in his Amateur session and Pro Driver Scott topping the Timing Sheets and Securing Fastest Lap of the Weekend in his Session, claiming Pole Position amongst the Strong Line Up of Professional Competition.
Unfortunately Racing Incidents on Race Day meant that MPS and the Team couldn’t convert this new found form into a strong points scoring result but we all leave the East Midlands based circuit confident that we can take this performance level to the rest of the circuits in the British GT Calendar.
